Modeo to use Penthera head-end software

Modeo today revealed that is going with a relatively unknown vendor to power its multicast mobile TV network. The subsidiary of Crown Castle has selected Penthera Technologies to provide the interactive programming head-end for Modeo’s network operations center in Pittsburgh as well as the interactive client software powering Modeo’s first handset.

Penthera is coincidentally located right next to Modeo’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, where the first trials of its digital video broadcast-handheld (DVB-H) network were conducted last year. An adjunct professor of computer science at nearby Carnegie Melon University, Penthera CEO Sam Leinhardt started Penthera last year after selling his previous mobile e-mail company Eyes Open to Nokia.

Modeo has been using the Penthera system in its trials, but today it announced a major commercial contract with the small vendor, agreeing to use its software from handset to NOC. Leinhardt said Penthera has developed a unique interactive technology for DVB-H that will allow mobile TV providers to embed the equivalent of hyperlinks into their broadcasts. For instance, a car ad streaming to a handset would contain code that, once activated with a press of a button, would immediately open a WAP browser to the car-company’s Web page. Or a sports broadcast could feed data to a play-by-play or statistic application running on the phone. While the stream from the DVB-H network is one way, the interactive features of the broadcast rely on the GSM/GPRS or UMTS network to send and retrieve any additional data, thus opening up new revenue streams for the carrier, Leinhardt said.

While many of the specifications for DVB-H have been spelled out by the standard there is not only room for innovation within those guidelines, but also much of the basic implementation of that standard hasn’t been defined. “There’s a lot of ambiguity in the spec,” Leinhardt said. Issues such as digital rights management (DRM) have been laid out by the standard but haven’t been commercially developed, leading DVB-H carriers and vendors to look for alternatives. In the case of DRM, Modeo and Penthera are working with Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM, which ties in closely to the Windows Mobile platform Modeo is using for its first HTC handset.